Email Marketing Design: The Essential Elements for Success

Small business email marketing isn't just about getting great content out to customers and prospects. It's also about making sales and growing your business. A great email marketing design is a critical component to making this happen.

Your goal is to capture your customer's attention the moment they see your email pop up on their device, so they continue reading.

Question is, how easy is it to come up with an effective email design that works? It's not as difficult as you might think, and that's what I am going to help you tackle in this article.

Templates Rock!

Having an email marketing design template in place makes every email task easier and simple to complete.

Remember, content quality increases consumption, click-throughs, and shares. However, content quality decreases every time changes in email design happen....find a template that works and use it consistently.

Email marketing design requires the right mix of colors. For example, if your email is about a promotion then you might consider using Yellow, Orange, or Red font colors to convey optimism, friendliness, and excitement.

Compare the samples below and pick the email with the better color combination.

Sample A

Sample B

I'm leaning towards Sample B instead of A. It's much cleaner and easier to read. What do you think?

Your From Address Must Scream "This Is Us"!

One of the reasons why emails don't get opened is because the "From Address" is unrecognizable.

Small business email marketing isn't about sending emails randomly. It's about sending relevant, helpful information to your audience that helps further your relationship.

Here are some pretty persuasive subject line examples currently in my inbox from some great marketers.

Regarding Amazon's Big Announcement

This is goodbye

Your site is worth the attention

Behind the scenes of my six-figure launches

SEO Mistakes

Never Ignore the Power of a Preheader

A preheader is the shortened text that follows the subject line when an email is viewed in the inbox. Think of it as a preview of the email content.

Why is it important? Subscribers use preheaders as a pre-screening tool and it's a chance for you to get some subliminal advertising.

Preheader optimization tips and tricks:

Keep it short

Use it as an extension of your subject line.

Include a call to action (CTA) in your preheader text.

Take a look at this example:

How do you set up preheader text? It depends on the email marketing platform you are using, but many of the popular platforms offer this capability.

A quick search in your provider's support forum for "preheader text" will most likely get you the answer you are looking for.

Calls-to-Action (CTA's) Are a Must

CTA's are the money-making-machine of your small business email marketing. They open doors to subscriptions, membership, inquiries, and sales.

Including a CTA in your email marketing design will help encourage your subscribers to take the action you desire.

Here are a few tips to improve your CTA's:

Apply words that provoke emotion or enthusiasm - Take a CTA like “buy now and get 50% off!”.

Give them a reason why they should take the desired action - A good example of this would be something like “call today to schedule your free consultation!”.

Take advantage of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) - Best examples are “Shop today! Sale ends on Monday,” and “buy now while supplies last!”.

Know your devices - Your CTA should work on all types of devices (desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet). For example, if your CTA is a button make sure it is large enough to easily click on a mobile device.

Be creative - Every time you send out emails, your CTA's should be as fresh as possible. Try to change up your wording. Instead of "Check out today's deals!", spice it up with "Tons of deals right at your fingertips!".

Here's a sample CTA from an email. Very easy to read and take action.

Include Links to Your Social Media Profiles

Expanding reach is another small business email marketing goal and the way to achieve it is to link your social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter in your email messages.

Let your subscribers know your business has an online presence that is worth following.

Here's an example of an email I recently received. This was in the footer of the email message.

Links Should be Pretty Obvious

In relation to expanding reach, your links should always be apparent in your email messages.

Links should stand out from the regular text for readers to be drawn to them.

Your links should exhibit some of these characteristics:

Underlined

Bold Text

Colored

Check out this example. It's very clear where the external links are if I want to get more information.

Keep Text and Images to a Minimum

Email is a modern way of communication and its content should be clear for easy consumption, otherwise, it defeats its purpose.

The number of text lines and images play a very important role in click-throughs and conversions.

Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Mobile Marketing. At Rialto Mobile Marketing we help take the guesswork out of marketing for small businesses and make it simple. We're the bridge between where you are and where you want to be.

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